Your Adrenals Are More Important Than You Think

If I asked you to pick which organ was most crucial to your daily health, well-being, and ability to resist disease, what would your answer be?

You might suggest heart, lungs, or even brain—but chances are, you would not even think of answering adrenal glands. Yet the adrenals are the “x” factor involved in just about every one of our illnesses and symptoms, not to mention those days when we simply feel suboptimal.

The adrenal glands are two small organs that sit on top of our kidneys. Whenever we perceive any type of threat—whether a physical threat such a car accident, or an emotional threat, such as a work deadline—our adrenal glands are cued by our brain to set off a primal stress response.

This complicated chemical cascade releases several different stress hormones, chiefly cortisol. Cortisol is critical for our health and well-being. It has a tremendous effect on just about every system in our bodies, most immediately our hormones, digestion, immune system, and nervous system.

Cortisol affects our thyroid, pancreas, as well as ovaries for women and testes for men. It helps to determine our blood sugar levels and our insulin function. It also has a profound effect on the brain chemicals that determine mood, sleep, energy, and focus.

We need cortisol, but when we are stressed continually, then the adrenal glands either adapt in a healthy way, or they mal-adapt, leading to cortisol levels that are too high or too low.

Accordingly, imbalanced cortisol levels play a huge role in weight gain, mental clarity, anxiety and depression, motivation, and overall feelings of vitality or fatigue. Cortisol also affects our skin and hair, our blood pressure and circulation, and our lungs, muscles, and bones.

These symptoms in turn can become the harbingers of such serious conditions as auto-immune disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and cancer.

Cortisol is central to just about every health problem we face, which makes sense when we remember that stress is the primary condition of life, and cortisol is the stress hormone.

Cortisol is literally the medium through which stress affects us—and cortisol levels are individualized. We can’t guess our cortisol levels—which is what my research found. The only way to know how your adrenals are responding to stress is to measure your cortisol levels in your saliva.

This is why, as a practitioner, my first step in treating virtually every patient I see is to determine whether cortisol levels have varied from their optimal levels and, if so, to use herbs and nutrients to optimize those levels.

I know that until we have restored our cortisol levels back to their optimal state, health problems of some type will certainly continue.

Optimizing cortisol levels is my first step—by supporting the adrenals to have a healthy stress response and recovery. The good news is that once we can optimize our cortisol levels and heal our adrenals, good health will surely follow.

If you haven’t yet had your salivary cortisol levels measured, make sure you do! I consider it essential to your health. (click here to contact Melissa in my office and she can help you)

Empowering your wellness, naturally!

Dr. Doni

This article was adapted from The Stress Remedy: Master Your Body’s Synergy and Optimize Your Health, Dr. Doni’s book now available to order.

About Dr. Doni

DR. DONIELLE (DONI) WILSON N.D., is a naturopathic doctor, certified professional midwife, and certified nutrition specialist with more than 20 years’ professional practice. A graduate of Bastyr University, she is the author of widely-acclaimed book The Stress Remedy: Master Your Body’s Synergy & Optimize Your Health. In that book, she redefines "stress" to include toxins, food sensitivities, and imbalanced blood sugar levels, and offers expert guidance on how to reclaim optimal health and fertility. She is a sought-after speaker in the media, and at both public and professional events. Dr. Doni is also the creator of The Stress Remedy 7-Day and 14-Day programs, which support diet change, sleep, exercise and stress reduction. She hosts the podcast Empowering Wellness Naturally and writes a weekly blog at DoctorDoni.com.

Comments

You write very well. I’ve had chronic fatigue….. haven’t been the same since. Some think I have candida.
can you help ??? also, I had a stint in February …. have geosphopical issues etc …..
please help …

I am so glad to have found someone who understands what I am going through. I went through a major stressor, and then I felt like I crashed. It has been about 10 months now and I have been reading lots on adrenal fatigue, and cleaned up my diet, taking Vitamin D, and resting as much as I can. Decided to see an Endo and he wants me to take a blood test called a ACTH Stinulating test where they inject you with I guess a synthetic cortisol and test your blood in 30 minutes. I really don’t want to have this done and was wondering if the saliva test is a better way to go?

I find that the saliva panel, with four times saliva samples, helps us understand the FUNCTIONAL status of the adrenal glands, whereas the ACTH stimulation test tells us if the adrenals are responding or not. In most cases, the adrenals will respond, they just need support to get back on a healthy track – which we can do with nutrients and herbs. Many practitioners will treat with cortisone. My goal is to help your body (adrenals) function optimally again – to do that, I need to know how they are currently functioning. : ) thank you for your comment!